Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Omelet

A savory omelet folded with diced chicken and topped with thin white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Chicken Omelet

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the omelet

  1. Beat the yolks of 3 eggs until thick.

  2. Add ½ teaspoon salt, a few grains of pepper, and 3 tablespoons hot water.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff and dry.

  4. Heat an omelet pan and grease the bottom and sides with 1 teaspoon butter.

  5. Pour in the mixture, spread evenly, and cook slowly on the stovetop until slightly browned underneath.

  6. Transfer to a 400°F (200°C) oven to finish cooking.

  7. When firm, remove from the oven, fold, and turn onto a hot platter.

Serve

  1. Pour 1½ cups thin white sauce around the omelet and top with ½ cup diced cold cooked chicken.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Pepper + chickentop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites and beaten yolks set into the structure that makes the omelet light and tender.
Butter
Greases the pan so the omelet releases cleanly and adds richness and browning at the edges.
Thin white sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy coating that complements the omelet.
Cooked chicken
Supplies the savory filling and protein that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff and dry. Whites must be beaten to stiff peaks and folded gently so the air bubbles are not lost. The trapped air expands in the heat and gives the omelet its lift, so overmixing deflates it.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes